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Elegant style icon wardrobe essentials: Grace Kelly in black dresses

Elegant style icon wardrobe essentials: Grace Kelly in black dress, Grace Kelly in black dress, film The Country Girl(1954), publicity photo

Unlike Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly's name is not so closely linked to black dresses. We can remember her in icy blue, minty green, pure white, or even fire red, but not so much in a black dress. The two most famous black dresses she wore on screen are from the films The Country Girl (1954) and Rear Window (1954). Both films were released the same year, and both black dresses share the same style: a V neckline, cap sleeves, and a flared skirt. Grace Kelly wore the two dresses with the same accessories, pearl earrings and a pearl necklace.

That seems to have been her favorite style of black dress, one she carried into her private life afterward, in different versions. The most publicized black dress Grace Kelly wore off-screen was at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. It was the same silhouette: again a V neckline and flared skirt, again worn with a pearl necklace. She was then still involved with French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont. Just a few days later, Grace Kelly met Prince Rainier III of Monaco. A year later, she married him.

After becoming Princess of Monaco, the few black dresses she wore were of a slimmer silhouette, mostly in a column shape, and the neckline became higher. But she still sometimes wore the pearl necklace with her black dresses.